The Journal

What do we all have in common besides our genes that make us human?

What does every human have in common besides our genes? What makes us... us? Philosopher Diogenes once called humans "featherless bipeds." So what makes us different than a chicken that has been plucked? No, we do not have feathers. Yes, we walk on two legs. Except, we feel deep, meaningful, complex emotions. We are different than chickens, and every other animal for that matter, because we feel love, we feel remorse, we feel love and hate and sympathy and not just physical, but emotional pain. We can betray and be betrayed. We make tough decisions, ultimatums, and heartbreaks. There are people who care for us. There are people who have hurt us, and people we have hurt. There are people that hate us. Emotions we can't even name course through our veins, filling us with serotonin, adrenaline, and cortisol.

There is a word that sums up the entirety of one of the biggest difference between why we are human, not because of our genes, but because we do not rely on instinct to dictate our actions. The word is "sonder." This is the realization that each stranger you pass, each and every person on this planet has a life. And not a life that is just existing, pulling breath into your lungs, and pushing it back out. That every person you hurry by in the store, every women getting a new dress, every man carrying a briefcase, every child on the slide or swings or monkey bars, they all have goals, they have dreams, they want to go somewhere, visit someplace, be someone. This makes us human. Instinct does not tell us that the ones around us are living and real. It tells us to eat and breathe and sleep and survive.

Our genes determine hair color, eye color, height, skin color, and bone structure. They do not tell us what phobias we have or what we love or our favorite color. Nothing about how we treat other people. Not one thing about our favorite shirt, how we act in school, what we say in public, what type of music we listen to, or what genre of books we like. They don't tell us right or wrong.

Calling us "featherless bipeds" is not incorrect, per say, it just does not define the whole of what it means to be truly human. It could, in theory, be used to describe what we are physically. , but it does not even come close to what we really are. We breathe, we eat, we sleep, we live. We have ambitions, we have high times, we have low times. We are like the ocean. There is a low tide, and a high tide. There is so much life inside of us, but we have not even scraped the surface. We are deep and scary and beautiful and frustrating. Our genes are not what make us human. Our emotions, the ability to recognize and react to different situations. The ability to love and hate and apologize. That's what makes us human. That's what we all have in common.

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<<<I did this for a prompt for school. I thought it was cool. I liked I, so I shared it with you people. Well, enjoy!>>>

"There is some kind of a sweet innocence in being human- in not having to be just happy or just sad- in the nature of being able to be both broken and whole, at the same time." -C. JoyBell C.